North Korea gets pwned by DMCA, propaganda video is taken down for stealing footage from video game

You probably read the headline and thought, “wait, what?” Don’t worry, it’s exactly what you think it is. A bizarre North Korean propaganda video has been taken down by YouTube after video game publisher Activision filed a DMCA complaint.

The video shows dreams of future space dominance by North Korea, then eventually displays a scene of New York being attacked by missiles. The catch, however, is the New York scenes were directly lifted straight out of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, a game published by Activision. The text during these scenes read, “Somewhere in the United States, black clouds of smoke are billowing… It seems that the nest of wickedness is ablaze with the fire started by itself.” Other parts of the video include other interesting proclamations such as this tidbit, “despite all kinds of attempts by imperialists to isolate and crush us,” nothing will stop “the people marching toward a final victory.” Hm, and yet you took your footage from a video game.

Although YouTube has taken down the video, it was put onto LiveLeak prior to takedown. Check it out:

Here’s the launch trailer of Modern Warfare 3 for comparison:

Ars Technica notes that this video contradicts North Korea’s claims that its space program is completely peaceful in nature, but that is politics for another blog.

So, despite North Korea’s million-strong army, we have this little incident. Our very own Ashraf puts it best: “DMCA > North Korea”. Enough said.